European Music Contest Special Edition 1
}} #2 ► - |} The 1st special edition of European Music Contest will see the winners from the 15 first contests to decide who's best of the best. Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina was chosen to host the contest on April 13 2014. The venue for the contest was chosen on April 13 as Zetra Olympic Hall. Location Sarajevo (Cyrillic: Сарајево) is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an estimated population of 291,422. Sarajevo metropolitan area, including Sarajevo and East Sarajevo is home to 515,012 inhabitants. Moreover, it is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, the capital of the Republika Srpska entity, and the center of the Sarajevo Canton. Nestled within the greater Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, it is surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans. Sarajevo is the leading political, social and cultural center of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and its region-wide influence in politics, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science, and the arts contribute to its status as Bosnia and Herzegovina's biggest and most important economic center. The city used to be famous for its traditional cultural and religious diversity, with adherents of Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Catholicism and coexisting there for centuries. Due to this long and rich history of religious and cultural variety, Sarajevo was sometimes called the "Jerusalem of Europe" or "Jerusalem of the Balkans". It was, until recently in the 20th century, the only major European city to have a mosque, Catholic church, Orthodox church and synagogue within the same neighborhood. A regional center in education, the city is also home to the Balkans' first institution of tertiary education in the form of an Islamic polytechnic called the Saraybosna Osmanlı Medrese, today part of the University of Sarajevo. Venue Olympic Hall Zetra was constructed specifically for the 1984 Winter Olympics, hosted in Sarajevo, and was completed in 1983. Its first major event was the 1983 World Junior Speed Skating Championships. It was described as an "ultramodern, angular edifice" with a copper roof. The indoor venue hosted ice hockey and figure skating events, as well as the last closing ceremony held in an indoor place until Vancouver 2010. From 1984 to 1991, Zetra remained in service as a venue for ice sports. It served as the venue for several international speed skating events, and several speed skating world records were broken here. The arena suffered substantial damage and was completely destroyed by shelling, bombing and fire by the Serb forces on Monday, May 25, 1992 during the Bosnian War. The remaining areas of the structure, such as the basements, were put into service as a morgue and as storage space for medication and supplies. The wooden seats from the venue were used as material for coffins for civilians killed in the war. After the war, it was discovered that though the building was badly damaged, the foundation was secure. Although the original blueprints were never recovered, in September 1997, reconstruction on the venue, facilitated by the SFOR, began. The International Olympic Committee donated $US 11.5 million to the project, which cost an estimated DM 32 million (€ 16.4 million). The reconstruction was completed in 1999. Entries